site sort. Other authors following the same trend made him believe
in the utmost freedom in politics, literature and morals. Freedom in
everything--the pleasures of the moment--seemed to him the highest
good.

Under the sway of such opinions he began to sketch the plot of
his next opera, "Prohibition of Love" (Liebesverbot), founded on
Shakespeare's "Measure for Measure." This was while he was in Teplitz
on a summer holiday. In the autumn he took a position as conductor
in a small operatic theater in Magdeburg. Here he worked at his new
opera, hoping he could induce the admired Schroeder-Devrient to be his
heroine.

Wagner remained in this place about two years and finished his opera
there. The performance of it, for which he labored with great zeal,
was a fiasco. The theater, too, failed soon after and the young
composer was thrown out of work. His sojourn there influenced his
after career, as he met Wilhelmina Planer, who was soon to become his
wife.

Hearing there was an opening for a musical director at Koenigsberg,
he traveled to that town, and in due course secured the post. Minna
Planer also found an engagement at the theater, and the two were
married on November 24, 1836; he was twenty-three and she somewhat
younger. Kind, gentle, loving, she was quite unable to understand she
was linked with a genius. Wagner was burdened with debts, begun in
Magdeburg and increased in Koenigsberg. She was almost as improvident
as he. They were like two children playing at life, with fateful
consequences. It was indeed her misfortune, as one says, that this
gentle dove was mismated with an eagle. But Minna learned later,
through dire necessity, to be more economical and careful, which is
more than can be said of her gifted husband.

After a year the Koenigsberg Theater failed and again Wagner was out
of employment. Through the influence of his friend Dorn, he secured
a directorship at Riga, Minna also being engaged at the theater. At
first everything went well; the salary was higher and the people among
whom they were placed were agreeable. But before long debts began to
press again, and Wagner was dissatisfied with the state of the lyric
drama, which he was destined to reform in such a wonderful way. He was
only twenty-four, and had seen but little of the world. Paris was the
goal toward which he looked with longing eyes, and to the gay French
capital he determined to go.

When he tried to get a passport for Paris, he fo